For The Worlds
by Renn Ireigh
Summary: Twenty years ago, Hikari made a choice. It would save the worlds and everyone in them. It would also ruin her life.


For the Worlds

Renegade

_Disclaimer: _Digimon is the property of Toei Animation.  The song Julia belongs to Our Lady Peace.

_Notes and **Warnings**: _ Season 02 never happened, and the conclusion to season 01 never happened.  The way that you choose to interpret all that is implied is your decision.  You can either read and deal with it or go away.  Flaming because you can't handle it is just immature, but if you wish to act like a two-year-old, that's your decision, not mine.

---
    
    _Can you see her standing there_
    
    _Well she's trying to find just anywhere_
    
    _Flowers in her hands_
    
    _She doesn't know why_
    
    _Offered is advice to you_
    
    _And all you do was fake it_
    
    _And she's only yours tonight_
    
    _And she never cries,_
    
    _But I know there is hurt inside_
    
    _Julia_
    
    _Drowning in her own visions,_
    
    _When she's begging the past to stay behind_
    
    _Black cat in the night,_
    
    _Black cat in that sky_
    
    _Offered is advice to you,_
    
    _You left but I don't blame you_
    
    _And she's only yours tonight_
    
    _And she never cries,_
    
    _But I know there is hurt inside_
    
    _Julia_
    
    _Digging up the past_
    
    _To cross that line_
    
    _To bury it one last time_
    
    _Offered is advice to you_
    
    _And all you do was fake it_
    
    _I know there's pain inside there's truth_
    
    _But you just have to face it_
    
    _And she's only yours tonight_
    
    _And she never cries,_
    
    _But I know there is pain inside_
    
    _Julia_
    
    _Yeah_

_There's Julia_

---

The journey is easier going there than it is to come back.  

While my wings, still faintly crooked, pump endlessly at the still night air, moist and heavy against my wings and skin, I am eager to arrive at my destination.  There is silence in the midnight sky, when the moon does not bare its silver face and the stars do not shine their metallic pinpricks against the black canvas of the night.  Moonless midnight- something my Chosen has had to become accustomed to.

For where she is now, it is always midnight, and in her heart, it is not only midnight, but the chill eerie black of death.  She has had to adapt to so much, but she did so willingly, for the worlds.  We all know that if it was not for the worlds, she would be dead by now, and of her own decision; but because the fate of them all lies on her young shoulders, she chooses eternal life in what must be an incomparable Hell.

My eyes scan the ground for the one I had been partnered with all those years ago, and finally catch sight of her, standing straight and tall in front of the imposing stone fortress she now calls home.  I dive through the air, plummeting like a stone to the ground, and as I land and run to her I see the blood red rose she clutches in her hands.  The thorns impale her skin, soaking her pale-as-milk hands in a ghastly bath of crimson.

I slow, and walk the few paces until I am standing eye to eye with my Hikari.  She has grown so much in the twenty years since she last saw Earth, her body making the switch from innocent childhood to womanhood while I, her Digimon partner, am not here to see her.  Short brown hair has grown out, and blows in the cold steady wind from the West in a soft, rippling banner.  Her black dress, tight almost to the point of being pornographic and slitted up both sides to mid-thigh, blows with it, revealing her pale bare feet.  Long sleeves, flaring around her hand in a medieval fashion, billow in the breeze.  Her face is expressionless, carved perhaps of marble and ruby for her ever-red lips, and amber for her distant eyes.  She appears a queen, but appearances are deceiving.  Hikari holds dominion over no one.

"Angewomon."  And the chiseled lips part, speaking my name in an almost monotone, dispassionate voice.  

"Hikari!" I exclaim, bending slightly to envelop her in the embrace of my arms and wings.  Her body is stiff and ramrod straight as she emotionlessly stands in place, whispering in my ear, "He is watching.  I must be careful of my actions."

But of course.  He is always watching.

"Oh, Hikari… you've grown so much since I saw you last," I say, releasing her at last.

A small smile cracks the carven face open slightly.  "Twenty years," she says.  "Twenty years," she repeats, almost in wonderment.  "It's been that long."

I nod slightly, and she glances down in confusion at her hands as if she has just now felt the blood running over them.  Her soft hands are soaked in the blood now as it drips from them to the ground.  She does not release the rose, and I assume that that is because he is watching.  She must remain distant and perfect when his eyes are upon his prize.  Perfection of the type he desires feels no pain.

"Why am I holding this?" she whispers, and as the question leaves her lips we both know the answer as it came to her in a flash.  He gave it to her after he made sure that she would not forget whose prize she was, whom she belonged to.  He told her that she would keep it and hold it tightly, though her pain-shot hands would bleed.  And so she will, because she _is _his prize.  What her master orders she must do.

"Hikari, why do you bear it?" I ask, mostly rhetorically, because we both know the answer.  _It is for the good of the worlds.  What is one life against millions?  _"Let me take it over for you."  _He will not accept.  You cannot be broken as I was.  "Let me try."  __ I will not.  You are an angel.  I will not allow you to be corrupted and tortured like this.  "Hikari, I know my limits, and I know that I can do this."  __You will not.  He will not take you as he has taken me.  He is no fool.  "Why do you allow him to do such things to you?  You were so young…" _ I would have learned someday.  Maybe it is better this way.  _"Don't say that!" _ I already have.  _"You're old enough to fight back!"  _Am I old enough to lead the worlds to destruction out of selfishness?__

There is no answer to that.  We both know that she will go on as she has before, wishing she was somewhere else as he played his twisted games with her and her body.  But she will not give in to what we tell her to do.  He made it clear that_ if she did not obey his every command, he would take control of both worlds- it is within his power- and everyone in it.  She knows what he would do with an empire spanning planets and its inhabitants.__ And so she surrendered herself to him._

_Angemon lay on the ground, broken, for a split second before erupting into flecks of data.  Garudamon fell screaming from the sky as her body flickered away.  MetalGarurumon- WarGreymon- Zudomon- Lillymon- they were already gone.  MegaKabuterimon dragged himself along the ground, building up power for a final attack, when he was blasted to bits by flying swords.  I was the sole broken-winged remainder of the eight Chosen Digimon that had come this far, leaving Darkness behind them as they moved from enemy to enemy, bent on the destruction of evil, but only to meet their demise at the hands of the Master of them all._

_Destruction had found our team.  Of the Digimon, only I remained, and barely so.  The rest- my lips quivered as they formed the shapes of the syllables, but no words were emitted in memory to the valiant and fallen.  Their partners were the epitome of devastation, Taichi kneeling immovably by the spot from which WarGreymon had vanished; Yamato stood riveted to the spot, shaking, hands clenched into fists; Sora and Mimi leaned against each other for support as hot, silent tears poured down their faces; Jyo leaned against a nearby boulder, face buried in his hands; Koushiro, his leg broken and twisted at a horrible, unnatural angle, lay on the dusty ground, his body convulsing as the tears poured into his mouth, ever whispering- Kabuterimon, Kabuterimon, Kabuterimon-__ over and over; Takeru, robbed of his partner for the second time, stood with Hikari, crying into my shoulders as my arms extended around the youngest of the team, who had seen more death than was right for their young age._

_My eyes were not focused on the children that I held.  I glared death at the laughing enemy who had caused this.  His mouth twisted into a horrible, malicious smirk as he raked his gaze over the forms of the Chosen Children as they stood in shock and grief, raked his gaze appraisingly over my Hikari as his eyes took on a calculating expression._

_"You know that you will not return to your world," he said, in a perfectly commonplace voice as though commenting on the weather.  "You will die here.  There will be no reconfiguration for you; humans are __a fragile, inferior race.  No.  You will die."  He paused for emphasis.  "Unless…"_

_We would not rise to the bait and give him the answer he wanted so much to hear.  _

_"You will die, and I will take the worlds and bend them to my will; yes, and their inhabitants with them," he said in a clipped, cold tone.  "Unless, for all of eternity- and I will ensure that it will be that long- one of you remains behind with me."_

_"I will," I said, knowing that one day, I could- would- take him, destroy him._

_"No, not you, Angewomon, because I know what you would do.  Not you.  Your partner."_

_"No!" I shouted, clutching Hikari tighter. _

_But the small, sickly girl- even now, her abdomen clenched tight as she hacked coughs through her tears- wriggled from my arms.  "Okay," she whispered.  "For the worlds, I will do it.  For the worlds."_

_"Hikari NO!" I yelled, grabbing her hand and pulling her to me.  But she shook away with a resolute gaze and said steadfastedly, "What is one life against millions?"_

_And she walked to him, and never turned back, though I reached for her and almost caught her hand.  My little Hikari, whose psychic abilities made her unique and powerful and whose optimism made her irresistible, my little Hikari, mature beyond her years, my little Hikari, who knew more than any eight-year-old should and took it all in stride with a dogged attitude I admired, was gone.  _

_For the worlds, she sacrificed herself.  For the worlds, she took the fate of entire planets and bore it upon her tiny shoulders with the resolution of one whose years numbered many times hers.  For the worlds, she condemned herself to eternal torture.  For the worlds, she forfeit her freedom and her life and her innocence.  For the worlds, she gave her purity and naïveté.  For the worlds._

_For the worlds._

As she looked into my eyes, I realized that she knew that I was traveling the paths of memory again.  "There was nothing you could do," she whispered, her hand reaching out to wipe a tear from my face but jerkily dropping it before she broke one of his laws and touched someone other than him.  "But the ghosts of the past still haunt you.  Why?"

"You cannot say that you have forgiven him."  _I have not.  I can not.  I will not.  "You cannot say that the past does not still weigh heavily on your memory." __ That it does.  "You cannot say that you wish there was some other alternative."  __I do.  "You cannot say that you enjoy the twisted games he plays with you."  __I do not.  And I never will.  "You cannot say that in your heart, you do not cry."  __I cry.  "You cannot say that you do not wish at times that you had never been born, so that this would have never happened."  __I wish I had not been born._

"Oh, _Hikari-" my voice cracked as I spoke her name, and leaned forward again to hold her in my arms and bury my face in the sweet smell of her hair.  "I wish it had been me rather than you!"_

The sound of a throat clearing softly behind us, and we both whirled around, and looked at _him.  Intense hatred must have shown in my eyes, and twisted my face, but Hikari maintained the dispassionate mask she had learned to assume.  I noticed the change in her demeanor- she had lost all of the inner strength that even now burned with a fire that continued to amaze me.  She was meek, unassuming, subordinate.  There was no doubt who was in charge now._

"You may go," he said to me, glaring without actually appearing to do so.  "Now, or my Hikari will suffer for it later."  I bristled as he called my partner his, but there was no doubt of his veracity.  I would not have Hikari be punished for something that was not her doing.

"Be strong," I whispered to Hikari as I passed her.  "I love you, my Chosen."  I leapt into the air, my wings beating gracefully at the sky.  I saw with a sense that my eyes did not contain that she had walked to him and that they had disappeared inside the great fortress, moving towards a suite of elaborately decorated rooms, turning into one.  Blood red roses, the same as that which still soaked her hands in blood with its thorns, grew from hidden pots and climbed the walls until the entire room was crimson with the petals and obsidian with the stonework making up the giant bathtub.  An open door revealed black marble walls with thick crimson carpeting, and the shining satin corner of a matching bedspread.  The roses did not entirely obscure the skylight, but I did not need it to know what was happening inside.

I would turn to kill him, but his level is higher than mine.  I do not doubt that he would kill me instantly, then torture Hikari in some way and make her feel the cause for my death.  I would not have that.  And so I leave.

It is with my sorrow weighing down my body that I leave my Hikari with the Dark Master Piedmon.  But it was her choice.

And she made it for the worlds.


End file.
